


Mythology

by Merixcil



Series: ReyLo Week 2018 [4]
Category: Ancient Greek Religion & Lore, Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Inspired by Orpheus and Eurydice (Ancient Greek Religion & Lore)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-26
Updated: 2018-04-26
Packaged: 2021-03-04 03:40:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,457
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24787102
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Merixcil/pseuds/Merixcil
Summary: Sometimes people die and it's all you can do to bring them back
Relationships: Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Series: ReyLo Week 2018 [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1791526
Comments: 8
Kudos: 21





	Mythology

The empty space she leaves behind her could level mountains. Ben wakes every morning to the sun streaming through the bedroom windows where he failed to close the curtains the night before and rises up, expecting to see the soft brown halo of her hair fanning out across the pillow. Every time he finds it missing, he assures himself that she’ll be downstairs, eating standing up at the breakfast bar despite the fact that they have stools or burying her nose in a book without bothering to turn the television off after the morning news. Light inserts itself into his life whether he likes it or not, but she was sound, she was fire.

He closes his eyes and he remembers her smile like the crescent moon on clear nights, opening out to cradle the stars.

His mother would want him to move on, Ben thinks, but his mother’s not around to browbeat him in to getting help and his father can’t stand awkwardly on the edge of his emotional fallout anymore. Sometimes he calls the house phone in the middle of the night, just to hear her voice on the other end of the line.

_Hi, you’ve reached Rey and Ben. We’re not here right now, so leave a message and we’ll call you back._

Ben must have left more than fifty messages by now, terrified that the storage space on their answering machine will run out any day. If he gives it enough time, she’ll call back. He’s sure of it. 

Ben drives himself out of town on a whim, wearing the same pair of pyjamas he’s been living in for a week and with an axe in the boot of his car. His vision goes curiously blurry every time he glances at the speedometer. He pushed past the speed limit ten miles ago, quantifying it won’t make any difference.

Hands gripping tight to the wheel, knuckles white with the strain. He swerves to avoid a car coming towards him in the opposite direction down a road that he knows should be big enough for the both of them and swears up a storm when they stay in their lane, easily out of his way if he were really paying attention to the road.

If Rey were here, she would snap at him, scream bloody murder till he got his shit together and calmed down. She would demand he pull over and swap places with her so that she could drive. Her anger was always so much less destructive than his.

But she’s not here. She’s not anywhere. Ben doesn’t stop driving till he’s well and truly lost, parking the car as well as he has the patience to on the edge of a forest and heading off into the trees with his axe. He wants to break something, something that matters. Maybe he can split his own head open and be done with it. He pushes on as the sun begins to set, swinging the axe wildly into the trunks of unsuspecting trees and disappointing himself every time when his anger refuses to abate.

Half an hour in from the road is an oak four times are wide as he is. It must have grown here for hundreds of years, the nobbled crevices of its trunk and the wide, spiderlike reach of its canopy reminding him of his mother’s old political friends. That will do, he thinks, or at least it will be a start.

The axe doesn’t want to work with him. It takes Ben hours to whittle the trunk down till it can fall, the crash of branches splintering and cracking as it impacts on the soft forest floor soothing his nerves. He doesn’t stop to think that he ought to have moved out of the way till the moment has passed.

Ben pauses to admire his work, stepping up to look at the fragmented splinters of the torn wood. But where the rings determining the age of this fallen giant should be, is a deep dark hole. Cold, stolid air rushes up to meet him as he looks down in to it, tinged with the rotten sweet smell of decay.

The hairs on the back of his neck rise up. Ben is suddenly very conscious that he is in the middle of the woods at night and has no idea how to get back to the car.

“Ben?”

Rey’s voice echoes up from the hole. Ben drops the axe and dives inside before he can think better of it.

“You can’t take her.”

“But I have to.”

“She is not yours to take.”

“She wasn’t _yours_ to take!”

“I didn’t take her, she was given to me. Now that I have her, I can hardly give her back.”

“But you could. She’s right there. Just-“

“You should leave this place, it isn’t for the living.”

“I might as well be dead without her.”

“You think I’ve never heard that line before? Pathetic.”

“Please! I’ll do anything. I’ll promise you…You can take…”

“You don’t even know what you have to bargain with, boy.”

“Then tell me!”

“You have nothing.”

“Not an option.”

Hades, terrible and dark on his throne of briars, smiles at Ben. “You know, I once knew a young man quite like you. Perhaps we can work out a deal.”

The journey down to the underworld had been instantaneous. The journey back is more complicated. Up ahead, Ben can see the circle of light coming from the open end of the tree trunk. He’s greeted by a sudden wave of regret that he cut down something that had been living so long. It could have had hundreds of years of life left, it might have looked out upon so many people’s lives if it hadn’t been cut down.

“Careful!” Rey warns, before Ben steps on a loose stone in the middle of the river they are wading up. The Stix is bitingly cold, he swears he’ll never feel his feet properly again.

Or he thinks it’s Rey. Something that had looked like her had been visible in the horizon of Hades' courtroom and he had bartered for it before bothering to check. He’s not allowed to look now, not until they’re above ground.

This could all turn out to be so pointless. He can see it now, him walking through life with a shade at his side, unable to fully engage with the waking world. What right did he have to pull her back with him? He never even asked if she wanted to leave.

She would have shouted at him, surely, if she hadn’t wanted to. She would have berated him for presuming to know what she wanted better than she did herself. A hand slips into Ben’s and he no longer knows if it feels the way she used to feel. Small and powerful, angry and beautiful. He doesn’t know anymore. He doesn’t know.

The lip of the tree trunk splinters under his boot. Ben looks down and sees the sap trickling back down to the underworld, growing cold and morphing into the river. His eyes follow it back into the dark, back the way he came.

“Ben!” The thing that may or may not be Rey shrieks, but its too late. Ben’s eyes find the black all over again, watching as time and space dissolve into nothingness.

He lands on his back, on the soft peat of the riverbank before Hades' palace. When he looks up, the light is gone and so is she. For the first time in months, he feels at peace.

She wakes in the morning to the sound of her alarm calling her to work, dressing quickly and eating a bagel standing up at the breakfast bar. The house is starting to feel less huge to her, more like something that she could fill all by herself. She doesn’t particularly like to, but she has to adapt. It’s been a year since she woke up on the forest floor, her shoes soaked through and the understanding that Ben was gone for good roaring loud in her ears.

Rey keeps his picture on the mantelpiece, on the windowsill in the kitchen. She keeps him on her nightstand in her bedroom. No one gets to come into this space without knowing that he once used to occupy it.

And some days its hard. But those days are getting fewer and fewer. Rey leaves the house each day with a packed lunch and an open mind. Sometimes she swears she can still hear him, laboured breathing and feet splashing through the river water as they made their way back towards the surface. But then the memory fades and for all she knows she dreamed it.

**Author's Note:**

> This work was originally posted as part of a multi chaptered 'ReyLo Week 2018' fic that I'm trying to split up. If you think you've read it before, you probably have
> 
> Comments on the previous posting of this fic (just ask if you want me to remove yours) include:
> 
> >always_aaack_for_everlark7: UM OWWWWW OKAY IM IN PAIN NOW THANK YOU  
> >>Merixcil: You're welcome! :D
> 
> >Kisserey: Noooooooooo  
> >>Merixcil: Unfortunately, yes


End file.
